Trog (NES)

Don't be fooled, the one-eyed guy is a complete git.

It's an odd format to follow, but there's many games that take the idea started roughly by pacman and try to improve upon it. Pacman being the great example of a maze based game where you run around the maze and collect all the icons in the maze while avoiding things that will hunt you down and kill you if you touch them. A simple, basic formula and yet it's commonly found in a lot of games in one guise or another. Trog is very much like pacman with a facelift, additions and changes but the core gameplay is still at the root.

But is it any good? Always the key question as pacman wasn't broken so there's no need to fix it, but can you improve?

Seriously, Bloop. Get a better name.

Trog plays out as a story of 1-2 dinosaurs running around maps, trying to collect eggs and avoid the ever evolving and eponymous Trogs. A creature that happily spawns from holes in the ground and will gleefully try to kill your dinosaurs. Once you've managed to collect all of your eggs, you'll be able to escape from the level via an exit sign and then be able to continue onwards and upwards to harder levels with more trogs and increasingly difficult trogs to contend again as well as various traps and tricks.

Teleporters, oil pits, trogs... No wonder dinosaurs died out.

For example, you can run out of the arena for a death. You can be bashed and devoured by the trogs, burnt up and cindered by fire hazards, swallowed up by oil pits, run over by stone wheels and a whole assortment of other comically cartoony methods of dying. (It's a stone wheel, but you're left with rubber tyre prints on your corpse, that's quite an evolution of technology!), later evolutions have bouncing springs... Not entirely sure if that's a step forwards or backwards.

One of many smoothly animated cutscenes. Quite impressive, all things considered...

You've a small assortment of weapons to counter this threat however. Firstly, you've the ability to punch your enemies and send them flying away, this includes most of their attack but not explicitly all of them. You can also become invulnerable for a short time with the horseshoe power up, you can increase your speed with red flowers but lose speed with blue mushrooms, you can also breath fire when eating a spicy chilli-dog, a pineapple that turns you into an invincible T-Rex mimic that crushes enemies and chomps up Trogs wherever possible and for the keen of sight, if you manage to watch at the start of the level for an egg that glimmers and pick up that egg as your LAST egg, in one life, you'll open a portal to warp ahead several levels.

Wheel weapons. Rolling forever around corners so that the middle zone here, is a deathtrap

You will likely need all the help you can get as you try to rush through the 50 levels the game has to offer, which gives you quite the longevity for a game of this nature. Maps, while repeat in style to give the perspective of different areas, don't repeat with actual layouts. Later levels make use of teleporters, warp doors, catapults and walkways to make it harder to progress but also to encourage the use and development of alternative tactics. Especially as the Trogs are also able to use warp doors, teleports, fall off the island and use the catapults.

HINT: This weapon will be coming up... next.

The biggest enemy however, by far, is the control system. Alternative known as the Fucking Controls! In which you'll often find yourself wandering off the island because you miss-timed when the change direction and you should be pressing the direction LONG BEFORE you get to the point in which you wish to turn otherwise the game will just happily keep you strolling onwards... into the long abyss of a pit, a trap, an enemy you could have and SHOULD have avoided or worst of all, the edge of the map and into water death zone.

Sometimes an arcade conversion emulates things it really shouldn't

It's infuriating, to say the least, when it happens. It's outright rage-inducing when you stroll straight past the final egg and take a swan dive into the ocean, killing your change to get a warp zone, bonus points (though nobody really cares about those these days) and a route to a shorter overall game to be played!

T-Rex, for when you have to eat those trying to eat you.

Despite it being only one flaw in the games make-up, it's a huge flaw and causes unnecessary deaths and failures not because of a lack of player ability but by overly strict sensitivity to changes in direction and the rate at which the code updates the inputs being read. It's a real shame because graphically the game looks very polished apart from the backgrounds, the design and depiction of the characters are impressive, especially for the NES trying to replicate a more advanced arcade game. But the control issue is unforgivable. Dying in a game or failing in a game should be because of the player's inability to solve an issue, not because the game doesn't respond.

You will want these, just to get the game over faster

Instead of being fun, it just comes across as enjoyable until it feels like the game wants you dead and to stop having fun while it horsecock slaps you at the same time just to rub salt into the wound. I should lay off the coffee after that one.

The New Zealand Story

Welcome, enjoy your flightless birds.

Once again I only WISH that I was on drugs at the time of writing this, or at least the offices of the planning department of Taito when they came up with the story and idea behind this game. I can imagine it along the lines of them looking out of the window of the office building. Someone comments that we need a new platform game; akin to Bubble Bobble but 'different' and that the new characters and such need a little more grounding in reality. Then someone turns slightly and sees a zoo in the distance turns back to the board meeting and says "I think I have an idea..."

Then comes the bow and arrows, axe throwing cats, giant leopard seals and hedgehogs hanging from balloons. Lasers, bombs, fireballs, dragons, bears with visors, alien UFOs, whales encased in ice and I think I need to take some of that stuff they're on.

What is that thing, on a duck?

The New Zealand Story, based around the islands of New Zealand but in truth has so little to do with it that you might as well have just said "Fuck it, here's some levels" and away you go. Takes the lovely little Tiki, a small kiwi bird with running shoes, gives him a reason to be involved in this adventure which in the opening cinematic is about a large leopard seal kidnapping all his friends (including the one that's either smoking a fag or on drugs, lively bunch in the 80s) and setting across 5 worlds to go rescue them all.

But how do you do this? I hear you ask... or not, since few people will genuinely give a fuck about a game originating some 26 years before this review was written. You take the usual route of platforming, jumping, shooting, flying with the aid of various balloons and such, eventually coming to the cage at the end of the level holding whichever friend you had kidnapped from you, eagerly awaiting release and escape into the same maze you just navigated to get there in the first place.

There's no mention of what they do after, or how they get home, or why they're not forming a small army with you of angry, pissed-off kiwis, hell-bent on revenge and to club a seal to death for kidnapping them in the first place. (Possibly the ONLY time I will advocate seal-clubbing, this one deserves it for being a bit of a naughty boy)

Not a friendly place at all.

Oddly, there's a fuck-tonne of fruit to serve as bonus points within the game, a huge number of bonus warps and different ways to navigate around the levels and a wild assortment of power ups ranging from bombs, lasers, springs, joystick flight controls, time stoppers, fireballs and earthquakers to name but a few of the items available to you. Including the ability to collect letters to spell out "extend" for bonus lives here and a massive, and VERY massive, assortment of enemies to be encountered throughout the game.

Bears, snails, soldiers, bats, dragons, cats, I don't even know WHAT that is but it lobs stones, flaming gremlins, anemones, spike spitting blunderbusses, huge bosses (seriously, one of which you need to go into the boss to hurt it), spikes, HEAVEN itself! And the list keeps on going. Though usually you'll see the warp door open for enemies to come in and either hammer it with arrows or run your arse out of there, pronto.

The seal is a dick, you may hate him.

The game itself starts out with a lot of promise. Nice, bright and colourful, enemies pop out of existence and leave behind something to be collected or ignored, while your happy little kiwi, Tiki, runs around and hops from one place to another in an effort to collect all the things he requires to reach the goal of that particular level. The bigger issues come later on in the game when the setting and scenery takes a back step and it starts to REALLY feel like you're just running around a gravity focused maze... There's no fun to the levels that initially started the game and you're just aimlessly following arrows in the hope they're leading you the right way, it quickly becomes dull and lifeless while the enemies relentlessly spawn in trying to catch you off guard and pepper you with various items.

One down, many more to go.

Perhaps the most jarring aspect of this game is Heaven. Attained by dying on world 3, 4 or 5 in the game via some form of projectile on your last life of that credit and instead of game over, you go upwards, ascending like the first asshole in the rapture until you arrive at Heaven which is a level populated by spikes, very small (but many) platforms and at the end of it all, the virgin Mary (assumedly, there's no nametag). If you manage to overcome all the obstacles in the level, get to the holy mother herself, your prize is... Death. As if one of the hardest levels wasn't taxing enough, you get to "go to sleep" in heaven and your game is OVER.

Wow, shall I just put on a big shit-eating grin and lay down on the floor waiting for the next kick to my teeth then? As it turns out, you have to escape heaven (no clues on this) by finding walk-through walls and floors that will let you fall out of heaven and allow you to continue your game. While most of this game was likely made by people on weed, I swear this part was coded by the most sadistic bastard alive while on PCP.

Seriously, check this screen out.

Really now?

How fucked up is that? You die and everyone else is waiting for you. Game over, get another coin out and try again from Earth.

Aside from this overly jarring experience, the game is fine save for small issues of being ambushed by instant kill monsters, having the balloon popped that you're in/riding and either falling WAY back in the level's progression or (more often than not) landing on spikes which also negates a heaven visit. (In some cases I'd rather just death than the bullshit heaven) and in some places you need to be pixel perfect in your precision to navigate around some of the traps in the levels (by traps I mean the spikes placed RIGHT in your way). Going up or down a large tunnel will invariably have enemies spawn in that can take full advantage of the location and circumstance and rob you of a life.

Last boss, no contest with this weapon.

It really doesn't help when the penultimate level openly advertises itself as a maze either. And for bonus points, the ending is the story that would have been nice had they showed it at the start. But having said that, it's a fun little game if a little too maze-y which always brings me back to the game Abuse and its level editor which stated "do not design levels that shows you areas you cannot get to directly as it leaves players feeling like a rat in a maze" this game would have benefitted from that idea.

Kid Chameleon

The Megadrive (or Genesis to those that feel inclined to rename shit pointlessly after Bible books or Musical Groups) was touted at one point in its lifetime as being the MEGA answer to something SUPER, we all saw what they did there and one particular advert rung out with "With only 6 reasons for something SUPER and over 100 reasons for something MEGA..." which basically called out Nintendo's new console as being new but not many games on it... Come to think of it that's a very flawed argument. Megaman vs. Superman is a very piss poor argument for having something MEGA. I don't hear of characters have Mega powers, but rather Super powers, so even going by comic book standards, video games based on those comics, or other such media representations, I'll take the Super option thanks.

The same applies to gaming. Yes it's 100 reasons for MEGA but if those reasons are MEGAshit reasons...

Thankfully Kid Chameleon isn't exactly one of those games, it has many redeeming qualities although seems to be known in smaller, more specialist, circles on the internet and even fewer offline (not Real Life, it's offline... All time spent is REAL LIFE...)

Kid Chameleon doesn't really offer us much that's new in the way of platform gaming or even plot. It's a simple run-of-the-mill affair where a new arcade comes to town, it has a game that has virtual reality and you can walk around and play it. Think along the lines of Star Trek's Holodeck and you're home happy. Something goes wrong and people start to not come back out of the contraption, much akin to the Joy Can in the Venture Brothers show though this one isn't powered by a forsaken child. The final boss goes programming rogue monkey nuts mental and is abducting kids and players, though it's not explained for what. So up steps Kid Chameleon looking like a big headed throw back to the Fonz, to step into the game and beat it.

Quite an assumption, beat the game to make the final boss give back the hostages. Even then, there's nothing about demands, so either the Final Boss is hosting one hell of an elaborate tea-party or there's plenty of head going around for all (the bosses are large floating heads before anyone gets the wrong punch line there. Although....)

As Kid Chameleon(KC), you get to run, jump, bash blocks with your head and generally rip off Mario in the control department for quite a run of the game, including have 2 hit points before "DIE"ing (yes the game says that as you cop the big fat one from mortality's big smiting hammer). Running, ducking, jumping, air moving and such while you're navigating the game. 100 gems gives you a life, or finding a life, or you can find continues and then, thankfully and for the want of something that doesn't scream "another Mario game", there's the masks.

The main component feature of KC, is the ability to don masks that you find within blocks. Each mask will change KC (Here's the chameleon part, they used a word and made a game play mechanic upon it. Are they not clever?) into something else with various abilities. Fly helmet (HA! Helmet, it's a dick joke and sadly there's more) makes KC smaller and stick to walls, Knight helmet (yeah, bored of that joke now) tanks his health to 5 hit points, climbs walls slowly and smashes through blocks he lands upon. Hockey Mask turns him into a rip of Jason Voorhees and throws cleavers. Rhino Helmet (...¬.¬) allows KC to charge through enemies and blocks. Purple Helmet (OH COME ON!) lets him spin rapidly and fly. Green Helmet (nasty infection...) lets him scan for invisible blocks to become solid for a moment. Crash Helmet gives him a gravity switching jet-hover-board to ride, Samurai Helmet gives him higher jumps and a sword and Tank Helmet turns him into a tank that shoots bouncing skulls.

This all sounds very wide and expansive but bear in mind that each helmet is usually (not always) found JUST where you need it most. Often with few enemies around so you can make the most of the level and learn the helmet but in later levels, if you lose the helmet and get transformed back to normal KC, you're likely to die right there and then or will need to kill yourself to get the helmet back in that level.

Levels themselves often follow various themes, from desert looking levels, to cityscapes, grass hills, hell, flying islands, beaches etc but these are just tile sets and the end to every level makes this more abundantly clear when the level is stripped down to show the grey building blocks of a supposedly virtual reality game but for the player, it's like being shown "Here's what you really played around, it's not as nice as you think it looks". Every accomplishment in beating said levels made cheaper by being shown it's not that grand as you think. What a lovely "Reward"

Every now and then you'll come up against the infamous-spiky-drill-wall-of-instant-death that turns a normal level into a manic race from A to B before dying and you'll find the usual "fuck you" situations of bouncing blocks that propel you in various directions, dead-ends, enemies that will slow you down and like Helmets that won't offer speed and certainly won't save you once the wall greets you with the Black And Decker approach to walling. (Prefer Bosch myself for drills)

However what should be said of the levels is that there are a LOT of them. In many cases, there's more than one way through a level and more than one exit beyond the flag at the end of the level. Teleports (some hidden like the one in the first level that takes you to the final boss) will be found in increasing numbers the further into the game you go, some take you to secret levels, some take you to places in the same level and some warp you ahead a few levels and some jump you back and forth between levels in different locations like some virtual architectural game of hot potato. The game gets sadistic at times with such acts, while the layout and structure of some levels require one to almost make a map at times of the labyrinthine levels, a failing I find in any game where it feels like you're a rat trapped in a maze. Yes, every level could be considered a maze but if you're able to see a maze, the illusion of the level is broken.

Of course, once you start thinking in these ways, you become a cynical prick. Have you considered writing games reviews? I did.

The sound is a rather mixed bag, some of the music that plays through levels is of a high quality and comes across clear as a bell, a few adrenaline inducing tracks for the faster paced levels go well together with the design of the game though some tracks will leave players largely unimpressed by the bland and faint tunes of other levels. Digitised speech is a little hit and miss with this game, it's not the clarity one might found of hearing "Round 1, FIGHT" from Mortal Kombat, but a few samples like "DIE" whenever you're killed or the bosses attack, are very distinguishable while other cackles and smaller sounds can be lost in the distortion.

With over 100 levels (and not all routes mapped and known, I've found a warp that I've never seen replicated on any cheat site, I might divulge it someday), various routes and shortcuts taking you from level to level, skipping whole sections and even bosses, there's a great (though not apparently obvious, look here http://images.wikia.com/kidchameleon/images/0/0a/Map.svg) combination of ways to travel the game and miss out some real gems of levels and find ways to avoid the annoyances of others. You won't get a map showing you the layout of the levels in an "over world" type of view so it's very much a "From within the box" perspective that you'll have to grin and bear it.

Replay value with the game is mixed, if you play through, beat it and manage this quickly, you'll likely not play it again. If you play through and have to restart a few times and then get to realise there's a LOT of different routes, bonuses, maps and levels, you could have a lot longer playing the game trying to speed run it, finding hidden blocks to help you speed run it etc. For a platform game with little branding associated with it, it's a very solid game and later, very tough game. Later levels become particularly unforgiving and even the time limit can be an issue when you're running around not aware of the correct route to take.

Bosses become an exercise in endurance with very high levels of health and usually an unforgiving collision detection when it comes to jumping on them and their projectiles, unless KC has some incredible soles to his shoes, he can bounce on exploding plasma but can let it hit his toes. I guess the Doc Martin's were left at home this time. Which makes for a more frustrating battle experience, made all the more difficult by the time limit which can easily overrun if you're spending a long time navigating the level just to find the sonofabitch to bounce of his bald bonce.

But now, I've an axe to wield, a mask to wear and some things on fire to chop up. Then later play this some more.